


No Other Version of Me

by grandfatherclock



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Canonical Character Death, Reference to Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:14:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21978664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/pseuds/grandfatherclock
Summary: She smiles hesitantly as Jester reaches for her other hand, and takes a deep breath as she feels Jester's thumb running over her knuckles. Rainbows light along her every finger.Yasha might not have had as much time as the others to understand the worlds inside Jester Lavorre, but she knows enough to know one hand isneverenough for her.Two hands aren't enough either.Or: Jester is Jester, and her smile takes Yasha's breath away.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Yasha, Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha, past Zuala/Yasha
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39
Collections: Critmas Exchange 2019





	No Other Version of Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bboiseux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bboiseux/gifts).



> Title from _Jackie and Wilson_ by Hozier! Merry Critmas, you all <3
> 
> This work references Zuala and Molly's canonical deaths.

Yasha doesn’t know what… to do about all this. The music is loud, the performers at the centre of the room on the platform enthusiastic with their percussive sounds. The beat of the drumstick against the drum is pleasant, as she taps her heel to it, exhaling nervously and looking around for her… friends. Her friends. They’re her friends. The thought brings a shuddering exhale past her lips. Obann—and _oh_ , thinking that name make her momentarily _blank_ with rage, her jaw clenched so tightly her teeth are _gritting_ —couldn’t take them away, couldn’t make them _not_ her friends. Isn’t it strange how drumbeats can sound like footsteps, approaching closer and closer and _closer_ —

“Yasha,” Jester giggles, reaching for her arm. Yasha smiles down at her, turning her head to gaze at her fully as Jester grins widely back at her. Her blue curls are darker than the freckled hue of her skin—which makes Yasha think about stars, and how dark Rosohna is, and how the city just seems to be _made_ of glittery white lights that dot the sky—and her lips are painted… purple. This beautiful violet colour that matches her eyes and seems to bloom on her skin, like the fields Yasha's tribe would settle in for the spring. Fields seeming to come to life in dozens of shades of violet, endlessly delightful when Zuala and she would—

_Ah_. Jester is pulling her onto the dance floor as Yasha swallows, her throat suddenly dry. She thinks if she spoke her voice would be hoarse. Zuala and she would meet up by the hillside, the water impacting against stone far below covering the sounds of Zuala's laugh as Yasha kissed and kissed and kissed her.

Kisses. Kissed.

It's funny how a tense can feel like a hand around her throat. It's funny how the silence interrupted by percussive music and a Nicodrani accent and the smell of the perfume Jester sprayed all over their house— _we'll have a house someday_ , Zuala whispered once, in her ear—feels like a stone in the back of her neck, wedged in deep. Controlling. Overwriting her thoughts. Overwriting everything.

They could see the fields from the hillside.

Overwriting _almost_ everything. Yasha blinks as Jester looks back at her impishly, an eyebrow raised in a lilting insinuation that Yasha has trouble reading. She sees the way understanding blooms on other people's faces though, more understanding of the intricacies of her schemes, and Yasha… wants to understand. For the first time, she feels like she's in a _position_ to understand. Obann—thinking his name _hurts_ —is dead, she ripped his fucking wings off and watched his cult worship consume him, and that momentary vindication just… tapered off into a kind of listlessness as they all rushed to see how she was. These people she kept running away from, retreating into the storm where Molly would stay. Molly would tease.

Molly would die.

Zuala stayed where Yasha ran. Zuala would plead, she thinks, and Zuala would pray.

And Zuala would die.

Almost everything. Jester is humming under her breath, her voice lilting over little _la-la-la_ s that stumble in her voice as she tries to keep up with the instruments. She moves her feet in this awkward but endearing dance as she slides her hand down Yasha's arm. Yasha… shivers, just a little, shivers under her touch, and one side of Jester's painted lips curls into a smile as she finally grips Yasha's hand. Her fingers are cold, her nails painted this gentle pink that shimmers in the arcane lights that smear into all the colours of the rainbow.

Another thing Zuala loved. As far as Yasha is concerned, there are some things in the world that exist just for her eyes, just for her memory. She smiles hesitantly as Jester reaches for her other hand, and takes a deep breath as she feels Jester's thumb running over her knuckles. Rainbows light along her every finger.

Yasha might not have had as much time as the others to understand the worlds inside Jester Lavorre, but she knows enough to know one hand is _never_ enough for her.

Two hands aren't enough either.

Jester presses up close, head tilted to watch her. Her front is right up against Yasha's stomach. She can _feel_ Jester's soft breasts, and knows the view of her cleavage from this angle must be deliberate. Jester's eyes are too knowing for them not to be. Jester's _voice_ as she says, "You look like a _rockstar_ , you know?" are too teasing for her not to know what this is doing to Yasha. She whispers it theatrically, so it's really not much of a whisper at all, and Yasha smiles at her, smiles at the velvet green of her dress. Their heels click in unharmonized tandem with each other as they move against the dance floor, and Jester tilts her head, her hair sprawling onto one shoulder.

Yasha knows she's blushing. Zuala always teased her on her blush, her voice affectionate as she pressed two hands against her cheeks. Molly would comment cheerfully, and then brandish his sharp smile at anyone else who made a point of it.

She didn't blush when she was with the cult. The red on her face was the red of other people’s blood.

Fuck. _Fuck._ Yasha wonders if Jester can tell how damned cursed she is. How many ghosts she carries with her. She doesn't know why Jester continues with these teasing flirtations, why Jester looks like she's undressing Yasha with her eyes sometimes, why, why, _why, Jester Lavorre?_ "Thank you, Jester." Her voice is soft. _And why me?_ "You look like… a princess. A rockstar, too. Both." Her blush is deepening and she knows it.

"Princess rockstar," Jester repeats, but it's delight that her voice is coloured by, not ridicule. She widens her eyes, and then makes a gesture she's made before, one she's informed Yasha means _super cool_ in Nicodranas. Two fingers, the ones in the middle, curl in, the rest remaining as well as her thumb splayed out, and she sticks out her forked tongue, eyes glittering and excited. " _Yessssss_ ," she says, tail whipping behind her, and Yasha tries for a moment not to stare.

Then she takes a deep breath, remembering the way the windows shattered that night. The air was fuzzy, lightning crackling all around her as she felt herself, for the first time in months, just… breathe. Just breathe, and _think_ , and allow her echoing scream out past her lips to be tinged with pain and relief and… grief. The grief came crashing back with her thoughts, remembering cobalt blue stained in red and gore at the end of her greatsword. There was a sickening moment where she just wanted to run away from it all, run from what she did, run from the memories, just look to the echoing storm and beg it to take her far, far away. Far from here. Far from this. Far from… _Far from yourself_ , her mind whispers.

_Do not go far from me_ , Zuala whispered, kissing Yasha’s knuckles one by one.

“I could dance with you forever,” Jester laughs, smile wide one her face as Yasha slowly lowers one intertwined hand to rest it against Jester’s round hip. She giggles, watching her own hand move with Yasha’s, and they finally seem to reach a rhythm, reach a _balance_ as the violins start to overtake the drums in the music streaming through the air. It’s not the type of music where you grind, it’s the kind one would waltz to. Yasha doesn’t know how to grind anyway, not like Beau when she’s drunk and wooing a beautiful stranger. She doesn’t know how to waltz like Caleb either, the way he did when he was _also_ drunk, shuffling to Jester’s movement.

Yasha thinks it’s a little sad that so many of her… friends, and they’re her _friends_ , can only seem to manage to dance when they’re drunk. It makes her a little angry. Angry at the world.

Yasha kind of loves that she has the time and _space_ to be angry on behalf of these people. She kind of loves that she’s here, and that her ghosts and this dance seem to manage to coexist. She can think about how Molly would love this song without getting clouded away from Jester’s eyes. She can imagine the halting little dance she and Zuala would do in the forest without it withering away the feeling of Jester’s cold skin against hers, her body soft and round and perfect. Jester is tilting her head up, this little blush working its way onto her face and crawling down her bare neck—and the way her sternum is exposed and the dress dips on her front is _everything_. Yasha manages to stutter that out and Jester’s smile only widens.

“I could dance with you,” Yasha whispers, and Jester is craning closer. Ostensibly to listen, but her gaze is on Yasha’s lips. It only furthers Yasha’s blush, and it’s funny how that blush used to be a part of the world that was only Zuala’s. And then Molly’s, when he was her friend and teased her with his schemes. Her love, and her friend. Her dead love. Her dead friend.

Yasha is beginning to realize the blush wasn’t theirs at all. It was hers. Their deaths didn’t take it. She sometimes wish it did, but… but not right now. Not right now.

It’s dark in this room, when she leans closer, and whispers, lips ghosting against Jester’s, “I could dance with you forever, Jester.” She breathes that name like an incantation, allowing the strain of her journey to this place where she’s dancing to show in that tone she makes as Jester closes her eyes. She worries for a moment that Jester won’t like that, won’t like the burden of knowing this, knowing her, but then Jester is leaning on her very tippy-toes. Yasha tilts her head further down, black hair that streaks into greys and whites falling over her shoulders as she captures Jester’s lips on her own.

Jester has fangs, and Yasha _knows_ this. This is the first time Yasha _feels_ it, tongue running along one of them as Jester lets out a breathless sigh. Her freckled blue hands bunch on the front of Yasha’s own dress, the fabric rippling that for a moment Yasha worries there might be a rip. Then Jester just kisses her chastely again, this little peck after the heavy clash of tongue and teeth they just shared. “On the _dance floor_ , Yasha,” Jester says, eyebrows wiggling.

Yasha thinks her face is blooming like a flower. “On the dance floor,” she stutters, stumbling over her words a little. There are some people looking, but Jester pays them no mind, reaching for her hand again and tugging Yasha close. “Jester…” She lets that sentence trail, because she doesn’t know what to say. What _is_ there to say?

“Yasha,” Jester teases, and her hand tightens on Yasha’s own. “Want to dance somewhere else?” Her eyes gleam, and she looks around at the small glances people shoot their direction.

Yasha nods, her breathing a little uneven. “Anywhere.” It sounds like a promise. It sounds like a vow.

_Always_ , she told Molly, when he asked her only once if she was coming back. After her answer, he never asked again. The one word was enough for him.

Jester leads her away, talking a mile a minute, and Yasha’s one word seems to be enough for her too.

Yasha’s face is fucking _helpless_ as she gazes at the back of Jester’s head, but for once… she doesn’t allow herself to be terrified of that feeling. She embraces it like a cocoon. Jester’s thumb runs in circles on her palm, and Yasha tightens her grip.

They only get closer that night.


End file.
